Oscar Wilde

“ We base the education of children entirely on books, but we must give a child a mind before we can instruct the mind. Children have a natural antipathy to books—handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilisation. There at any rate is a country that has no trappings, no pageants and no gorgeous ceremonies. ”

“ It was not until I had seen the water-works at Chicago that I realised the wonders of machinery; the rise and fall of the steel rods, the symmetrical motion of the great wheels is the most beautifully rhythmic thing I have ever seen. [3] One is impressed in America, but not favourably impressed, by the inordinate size of everything. The country seems to try to bully one into a belief in its power by its impressive bigness. ”

“ Perhaps the most beautiful part of America is the West, to reach which, however, involves a journey by rail of six days, racing along tied to an ugly tin-kettle of a steam engine. I found but poor consolation for this journey in the fact that the boys who infest the cars and sell everything that one can eat—or should not eat—were selling editions of my poems vilely printed on a kind of grey blotting paper, for the low price of ten cents. ”

“ Every American girl is entitled to have twelve young men devoted to her. They remain her slaves and she rules them with charming nonchalance.
The men are entirely given to business; they have, as they say, their brains in front of their heads. They are also exceedingly acceptive of new ideas. ”

“ America still preserves it, to be, I hope, a short-lived curiosity.
San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artistic town I have ever come across. The people—strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call common, and they are certainly very poor—have determined that they will have nothing about them that is not beautiful. ”

“ A strong sea-lion sits alone! Of the lectures which he delivered in America only one has been preserved, namely that on the English Renaissance. This was his first lecture, and it was delivered in New York on January 9th, 1882. According to a contemporary account in the “New York Herald” a distinguished and crowded audience assembled in Chickering Hall that evening to listen to one who “was well worth seeing, his short breeches and silk stockings showing to even better advantage upon the stage than in the gilded drawing-rooms, where the young Apostle has heretofore been seen in New York.” ”

“ Calling these boys on one side I told them that though poets like to be popular they desire to be paid, and selling editions of my poems without giving me a profit is dealing a blow at literature which must have a disastrous effect on poetical aspirants. The invariable reply that they made was that they themselves made a profit out of the transaction and that was all they cared about.
It is a popular superstition that in America a visitor is invariably addressed as “Stranger.” ”

“ I was disappointed with Niagara—most people must be disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life. ”

“ He set sail on board the “Arizona” on Saturday, December 24th, 1881, arriving in New York early in the following year. On landing he was bombarded by journalists eager to interview the distinguished stranger. “Punch,” in its issue of January 14th, in a happy vein, parodied these interviewers, the most amusing passage in which referred to “His Glorious Past,” wherein Wilde was made to say, “Precisely—I took the Newdigate. Oh! no doubt, every year some man gets the Newdigate; but not every year does Newdigate get an Oscar.” ”

“ From Salt Lake City one travels over the great plains of Colorado and up the Rocky Mountains, on the top of which is Leadville, the richest city in the world. It has also got the reputation of being the roughest, and every man carries a revolver. I was told that if I went there they would be sure to shoot me or my travelling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing that they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me. They are miners—men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. ”

“ It is in the colonies, and not in the mother country, that the old life of the country really exists. If one wants to realise what English Puritanism is—not at its worst (when it is very bad) , but at its best, and then it is not very good—I do not think one can find much of it in England, but much can be found about Boston and Massachusetts. ”

“ The eyes were large, dark [6] and ever-changing in expression. He was a charming companion who could tell racy stories and repeat bons mots of those whom society delighted to honour, and at the same time could cap quotations from Greek authors.
6. A French writer, M. Joseph-Renaud, recently described Wilde’s eyes as being blue, while Lord Alfred Douglas affirms that they were green.
The two poems Le Jardin and La Mer appeared originally in the first number of Our Continent, an American Magazine, in February, 1882. They have not been reprinted or included in any edition of the collected poems. ”

“ They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice:—
The mortality among pianists in that place is marvellous. ”

“ The Americans are the best politically educated people in the world. It is well worth one’s while to go to a country which can teach us the beauty of the word FREEDOM and the value of the thing LIBERTY.
3. In a poem published in an American magazine on February 15th, 1882, Wilde wrote
“And in the throbbing engine room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.”
4. Poems by Oscar Wilde. Also his Lecture on the English Renaissance. The Seaside Library, Vol. lviii. No. 1183, January 19th, 1882. 4to. Pp. 32. New York: George Munro, Publisher. ”

“ See An Essay concerning Human Understanding, IV. xii. 10.
A still more striking instance of the use of this expression is to be found in the same writer’s Thoughts concerning Education, s. 28, where he says:—“Once in four and twenty hours, I think, is enough; and nobody, I guess, will think it too much.”
OSCAR WILDE IN AMERICA. An interesting account of Oscar Wilde, at the time of his American tour, was given in the Lady’s Pictorial a few weeks after his arrival in New York, the city which he described as “one huge Whiteley’s shop.” ”